My Road Trips - Saint Louis, Missouri
St. Louis, Missouri
This road trip started like most others, with a need for change and exploration. My friend Scott and I had been talking about going on a roadtrip somewhere, but we were undecided about our destination. One friday afternoon, the two of us piled into Scott's car and began heading east. The car was great to ride in, except the green 1976 Chevrolet Impala's lack of gas mileage was killing our budget. Still unable to decide if our final destination should be Saint Louis, or if we should go for the gold and try to make it to New Orleans, I dug out a quarter and tossed it for the final decision.
The quarter landed heads up, so it was agreed that we should investigate Saint Louis. Driving through the evening and into the night, we arrived in St. Louis late that night. Considering the difficulty involved with getting any useful sleep in Scott's Impala, we got a room at a motel and crashed for the night.
The next morning Scott drove to a local bakery with which he was familiar, and scored some pastries. He brought back several different items, most notably a local favorite called Gooey Butter. After eating breakfast and checking out of the hotel, we embarked upon our exploration.
Scott and I walked around the city, seeing what downtown Saint Louis had to offer. We examined the architecture of the tall buildings and ate lunch at a Hooter's restaurant in a mall that used to be a train station. We walked along the railroad tracks next to the Mississippi river, and squinted at the tiny people and cars from the dizzying heights of the Saint Louis Gateway Arch. In the afternoon we drove around several old neighborhoods in Saint Louis, looking for the house where Scott's father grew up. After finding Scott's grandparent's old house, we stopped at the dead end of a small urban street across from a run-down factory and overgrown field.
Our goal was simple enough: to find the river. We knew that we weren't far from the Mississippi, and we just wanted to walk along the river bank. So we set off through the big field overgrown with tall sharp grass and dotted with treacherous holes and ditches. After trudging through about a half mile of this field and circumventing a large barbed wire fence, we came to a row of trees overlooking the steep river embankment.
Looking down at the river, we paused for several minutes to figure out how it would be possible to get down to the river. The embankment was extremely steep and strewn with broken pieces of concrete and litter. We decided upon separate routes, so that if one of us fell down the hill, he wouldn't take out the other on his way down. After several stressful minutes of descent, we both made it down to the sandy beach on the shore of the Mississippi.
Scott and I sat on a log on the edge of the river, talking and watching the barges slowly meander down the waterway. We must have been there for an hour or two, because the sun disappeared and the sky became filled with the blackness of night. Watching the workers on the barges conduct their business, we noticed one particular barge was shining a light which seemed to be brighter than all of the others. Looking around, we discovered that the reason for the light's extreme brightness was that we were the target of the spotlight.
Squinting through the glare of the light, we could see people on the barge talking and moving about. Since the light was still focused on us, Scott and I decided that it was time for us to get out of there. Scrambling madly up the debris field of the river bank, we finally reached the top, breathless, our hands wet from the evening dew. After a leisurely walk back through the long field of tall grass, we got back into the green Imapala and headed home.
